Forums » Suggestions
Oh my god, it's... Gravity!
I could not be bothered to go through any old posts about this that may exist.
Radical concept I know. But for realism, being closer to a celestial body will impact on projectile motion, incl. Missiles, rockets, blasters and even perhaps... ships?
I'm not sure how this could work given ships could possibly fly at infinitely high speeds.
Workaround?
I'm sure this would give "Physics Mode" a very new meaning. Implementation of this might take a while due to the vector nature of the force, and it may have to be very weak to begin with. But eventually this has large combat uses, and could possibly help balance the AA issue which would neglect gravity.
Everything with mass is affected by gravity. So that means the curvature of different weapons would be different, and some larger than others. For example a neutron blaster will have very little curvature as a pose to a screamer rocket.
Anyway, take it away everybody!
Radical concept I know. But for realism, being closer to a celestial body will impact on projectile motion, incl. Missiles, rockets, blasters and even perhaps... ships?
I'm not sure how this could work given ships could possibly fly at infinitely high speeds.
Workaround?
I'm sure this would give "Physics Mode" a very new meaning. Implementation of this might take a while due to the vector nature of the force, and it may have to be very weak to begin with. But eventually this has large combat uses, and could possibly help balance the AA issue which would neglect gravity.
Everything with mass is affected by gravity. So that means the curvature of different weapons would be different, and some larger than others. For example a neutron blaster will have very little curvature as a pose to a screamer rocket.
Anyway, take it away everybody!
Gravity also affects massless things like light due to making space curvy, though the effect is much less noticeable than the effects it has on things with mass.
Anyway, I don't think this suggestion is relevant to VO considering the distances you can actually use within a sector. We're obviously in orbit, despite not actually making any progress around the planets and stars, otherwise the stations and asteroids would not be able to stay afloat. Within the small areas currently encompassed by a sector, the force of gravity and orbital speeds would be pretty much uniform. And since we're in orbit, in our frame of reference the acceleration due to gravity is basically zero. If we had larger distances involved, you could argue that the different orbital velocities at different distances from the planet/star should kick in, and with even larger distances the curved nature of a planet's gravitational field could become apparent, but those are very large distances. We can only shoot our weapons a few hundred meters.
We could do gravity from the asteroids I guess, but then we'd have to explain why they don't pull eachother, unless you want the devs to set all the asteroid fields into orbits around eachother, which would be neat in some ways. But giving asteroids gravity would probably put a pretty heavy burden on the server when people are flying through a field.
As for different masses having different arcs, that is false. Yes, there is less overall force pulling on an object with less mass, but having less mass, it takes a proportionally smaller amount of force to move the object. Another way of thinking about it is to consider each gram of the object independently. This is also why all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Drop a bowling ball and a feather on the moon, and they'll fall at the same rate.
If you throw a ball of neutrons, a bolt of xithricite, and a lump of plasma at the same angle and velocity, they will all have the same curvature, regardless of mass. If you take advantage of the lower mass of a stream of neutrons to send it flying at very much greater velocities than the bolt of xithricite, then it will experience less deflection over the same distance, due to existing within that distance of space for less time and therefore not accumulating as much gravitational influence. But we don't do that here, we shoot our neutrons at a measly 200-ish meters per second, in the same ballpark as most of our other weapons. Our faster weapons would show less deflection than the slower ones (if we had a non-zero acceleration-due-to-gravity to work with), but that is not related to their masses.
Anyway, I don't think this suggestion is relevant to VO considering the distances you can actually use within a sector. We're obviously in orbit, despite not actually making any progress around the planets and stars, otherwise the stations and asteroids would not be able to stay afloat. Within the small areas currently encompassed by a sector, the force of gravity and orbital speeds would be pretty much uniform. And since we're in orbit, in our frame of reference the acceleration due to gravity is basically zero. If we had larger distances involved, you could argue that the different orbital velocities at different distances from the planet/star should kick in, and with even larger distances the curved nature of a planet's gravitational field could become apparent, but those are very large distances. We can only shoot our weapons a few hundred meters.
We could do gravity from the asteroids I guess, but then we'd have to explain why they don't pull eachother, unless you want the devs to set all the asteroid fields into orbits around eachother, which would be neat in some ways. But giving asteroids gravity would probably put a pretty heavy burden on the server when people are flying through a field.
As for different masses having different arcs, that is false. Yes, there is less overall force pulling on an object with less mass, but having less mass, it takes a proportionally smaller amount of force to move the object. Another way of thinking about it is to consider each gram of the object independently. This is also why all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Drop a bowling ball and a feather on the moon, and they'll fall at the same rate.
If you throw a ball of neutrons, a bolt of xithricite, and a lump of plasma at the same angle and velocity, they will all have the same curvature, regardless of mass. If you take advantage of the lower mass of a stream of neutrons to send it flying at very much greater velocities than the bolt of xithricite, then it will experience less deflection over the same distance, due to existing within that distance of space for less time and therefore not accumulating as much gravitational influence. But we don't do that here, we shoot our neutrons at a measly 200-ish meters per second, in the same ballpark as most of our other weapons. Our faster weapons would show less deflection than the slower ones (if we had a non-zero acceleration-due-to-gravity to work with), but that is not related to their masses.
Light isn't massless. It has energy and mass and energy are interchangeable.
You also have to consider that all ships and ordnance/shots will be subject to the same constant vector, so it won't change much anything.
Also, gravity is a curvature in space-time continuum, so affects lasers, plasma balls, xith pellets and missiles the same way, for all practical measurements... even the mass of the heaviest missile is not enough to induce noticable changes in equation, comparing it to a planet or star mass...
So, unless you are talking about making everything in VO move in orbits - ships, stations, roids, planets and even stars - then realistic gravitational effects induces no noticable change in combat dynamics, at distances that VO combats occur.
Also, gravity is a curvature in space-time continuum, so affects lasers, plasma balls, xith pellets and missiles the same way, for all practical measurements... even the mass of the heaviest missile is not enough to induce noticable changes in equation, comparing it to a planet or star mass...
So, unless you are talking about making everything in VO move in orbits - ships, stations, roids, planets and even stars - then realistic gravitational effects induces no noticable change in combat dynamics, at distances that VO combats occur.
Good point abortretryfail, I stand corrected.
No, that is not a good point. It is a factually incorrect statement from someone who clearly does not know what they're talking about.
hm, interesting point))
gravity decreases exponentially with distance and none of the vo ships can reach minimum orbit speed for any distance they would just fall and burn up in the atmosphere or something.
plus this woudn't really bring anything to the gameplay for the amount of code work required, not to mention all the distance in vo are so small gravity would affect everything the exactly the same so no changes could be noted by anyone in a sector since they would all accelerate at the same rate.
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plus this woudn't really bring anything to the gameplay for the amount of code work required, not to mention all the distance in vo are so small gravity would affect everything the exactly the same so no changes could be noted by anyone in a sector since they would all accelerate at the same rate.
-1
This would end up attracting stations, too. This wouldn't really work. -1
eh worth a try :P